The Ten Myths of Innovation: the best summary

I wrote the bestselling book The Myths of Innovation to share the truths everyone should know about how big ideas really change the world. Far too much of what we know about creativity isn’t based on facts at all, and my mission is to change this.

The myth of epiphany. Flashes of insight dominate how creativity is reported, despite how small a role they play in breakthroughs. Epiphanies are a consequence of effort, not just the inspiration for it. And no idea is completely original, as all ideas are made from other ideas. When you hear a story about a flash of insight, the useful questions to ask are 1) how much time the creator spent working before the flash happened, 2) How many ideas from other people they reused and 3) how much work they did after the flash to make the idea successful. An epiphany doesn’t find investors, make prototypes, sacrifice free time or persist in the face of rejection: only you can do that and you’ll have to do it without a guarantee of success (More about epiphany myths).

The myth that we know history. We romanticize the past to fit the present, creating traps for creatives who don’t know the true history of their own field. Edison did not invent the lightbulb. Ford did not invent the assembly line. Inspiring lies are often more popular than complex truths. And history is heavily tainted by survivorship bias, which distracts us away from more useful historic lessons. History is not a straight line of progress: it wasn’t clear that B would follow A, until after they happened, which means the present isn’t a straight line of progress either (jetpacks and flying cars are not flukes, historically we’re wrong far more often than we think). (see Myth #8: the best idea wins).

The myth of a method. The challenge with creative work, especially in a marketplace, is the many factors beyond your control. You can do everything right and still fail. Most books on creativity make big promises based on history: they cherry pick examples from the past to support their “method”. Methods can be useful but they deny that the present is different from the past. There are too many variables in the present to have certainty. This is why terms like innovation system or innovation pipeline are absurd. The idea of an innovation portfolio, where a range of risk is assumed across multiple ideas, is more honest. Many books on creativity are surprisingly uncreative (lightbulbs should be banned from creativity book covers) and make impossible promises.

The myth we love new ideas. We are a conservative species: try something as simple as standing, rather than sitting, in your next group meeting. How accepting were your peers? Conformity is deep in our biology. While talking about creativity is very popular, actually being creative puts your social status at risk. All great ideas were rejected, often for years or decades, yet we bury this in our history (see Myth #1 & #2). The history of breakthroughs is a tale of persistence against rejection. Much of what makes a successful innovator is their ability to persuade and convince conservative people of the merits of their ideas, a very different skill from creativity itself. Your problem is likely not your ideas, but your skills for pitching ideas to others. Ideas are rarely rejected on their merits; they’re rejected because of how they make people feel. The bigger the idea, the harder the persuasion challenge.

The myth of the lone inventor. It’s easier to worship a hero if they are portrayed as superhuman. But even people worthy of the title genius or prodigy like Mozart, Picasso and Einstein had family and teachers who taught them. Many of Edison’s patents are shared with co-workers, as despite his huge ego he knew collaboration was critical (His Menlo Park office was one of the first research labs). Stories of mad geniuses who worked completely alone are rare. Pick any master who you think worked alone and read some of their history: you’ll be surprised how many people influenced their work. Learning to collaborate, and give and receive feedback, may matter more than your brilliance.

The myth that good ideas are rare. If you watch any 6 year old child they will invent dozens of things in an hour. We are built for creativity. The problem is the conventions of adult life demand conformity and we sacrifice our creative instincts in favor of social status. Unlike a child, adults are supremely and instantly judgmental, killing ideas before they’ve had even a moment to prove their worth. It’s easy to rediscover creativity, which is why brainstorming rarely helps much. We’re already creative. The challenge is ideas don’t come with the courage to invest in them. Good ideas are everywhere: what’s uncommon is people with the conviction to put their reputation behind ideas.

The myth your boss knows more than you. A fallacy of workplaces is that senior staff are better at everything than the people who work for them. This is false in many ways, but creative intuition might be the most false. To rise in power demands good political judgement, yet innovation requires a willingness to defy convention. Convention-defiers are harder to promote in most organizations, yet essential for progress. To assume senior staff are the best at leading change is a mistake.

The myth the best idea wins. We lionize winners and history blames losers for their fate, even if they did most of the same things the winners did (See survivorship bias). Marketing, politics and timing have tremendous influence on why one idea or its competitors wins, yet these details are more complex than we want to hear and fade from history. It’s satisfying to believe the best idea has won in the past, because it’s something we want to believe about the present too. But to be successful with ideas demands studying why some lousy ideas have triumphed (Why doesn’t the U.S. use the metric system?), and some great ones are still on the sidelines. The world of ideas is not a pure meritocracy and you need to act accordingly (See related chapter excerpt).

The myth that problems are less interesting than solutions. Einstein said “If I had 20 days to solve a problem I would take 19 to define it.” There are many creative ways to think about a problem, and different ways to look at a situation. The impatient run at full speed into solving things, speeding right past the insights needed to find a great solution. If you listen to how successful creators talk about their daily work, they spend more time thinking about the problem than the epiphany obsessed media would have us believe.

The myth that innovation is always good. How would you feel about an invention that ends your profession? What impact will an idea have 1,5,10,100 years from now? All innovation is change and all change helps some people and hurts others. Many horrible inventions were created with the best intentions (and some horrible intentions led to some good consequences). Benz and Ford never imagined automobiles would kill 40k people annually in the U.S. And the Wright brothers never imagined Predator drones. Any successful idea has a multitude of consequences that are impossible to predict and difficult to even measure.

Certainly the notion that the “best” ideas survive is something to be challenged – rather, I think, it is the most adaptable – to environmental pressures, fads etc., which last ahead of others which may in fact be mroe fit-for-purpose.

Using children as an example of Myth #6 is interesting. When people talk about children’s creativity, they often gush about how many zany, wacky, and unpredictable ideas kids come up with, then call this “creativity” and point to kids as examples for the rest of us to follow. But what they’re really saying is that kids are good ideators (novel idea generators), which is only one half (at most) of what creativity as about.

We often miss how important the second “half” of creativity is: usefulness! This is why most academic definitions of creativity define it as something that is novel – kids are usually good at this – *and useful* – kids are usually not so good at this. “Useful” ideas usually come from people who know a field well and have a nuanced understanding of the complications that new ideas introduce, which usually means years of training and experience in that field. (Myths 2, 5, 8 and 9 all touch on this idea – this innovation is about how these ideas are applied and adjusted to the marketplace / field / ecosystem, etc.)

BTW, I’m really glad you wrote this book. I hope it gets some of these ideas into the popular discussion of what “innovation” and “creativity” really are.

Allen: Sure. The book obviously makes the point clearer, but broadly we all agree children don’t require special training or methods to explore ideas, but adults in most workplaces have so much social and psychological judgement that they believe only through some structure or education can they learn how to both find ideas and play with them.

I’ve enjoyed your insights on innovation in this and other articles, and I was struck by myth number 7: The myth your boss knows more than you. I was especially drawn to your last comment, “To assume senior staff are the best at leading change is a mistake.”

To many organizations, “change” simply means doing the same thing with only a few cosmetic differences, usually with fewer people, but hopefully with better financial results. Layoffs may mean major change for the people forced to find new jobs, but I question if anything truly innovative actually occurs in the organizations themselves.

I think this concept could benefit from deeper exploration, especially since new executive leadership is often brought in with the intent of leading change and since the principles of Kotter’s “Leading Change” are taught in business schools. Perhaps executives should endorse change instead of leading it? Lots to think about here.

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